ABSTRACT
As the field of behavioral medicine has matured, the empirical issues which require attention have changed focus. Pioneer behavioral medicine researchers were faced with simply demonstrating that behavior can influence health, and that modifying behavior can affect health outcomes. In the current climate, such precepts are accepted and an increasing number of behavioral intervention options are available to patients. With the rapid and recent explosion of interest in alternative and complementary therapies, the number of available patient-initiated, behavioral, and non-allopathic intervention options are ever increasing. This dynamic situation presents current behavioral medicine specialists with a context in which the assumptions and methods of our work must be reconsidered as we face the task of demonstrating which of several behavioral interventions is most effective for a given problem and for a specific patient population. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss conceptual, implementation, and measurement issues of particular methodological relevance in current psychosocial intervention research.
